—Wild, fascinating and well-played game, but the bottom line for the Pirates: Shelve the bubble talk. Barring a Big East Tournament miracle, the NCAA dream is over. The best the Hall can finish in the league is 9-9 — assuming they survive a tough environment at Rutgers’ Senior Night, which is far from a given. We’ll dissect the body later, but for now let’s say this loss typified the Pirates’ season: Great flashes, but ultimately a failure get over the hump in crunch time (0-4 in OT this season). Get ready for the NIT.

—If you appreciate the sport of college basketball, you have to tip your cap to Marquette. Winning three straight road games in overtime is just about unheard of. The Golden Eagles made more like the Warriors (their old nickname) in responding to punch after punch by Seton Hall. They are going to the Big Dance and they deserve it.

—We’re surprised about Gonzo’s comments on John Garcia and Herb Pope in the postgame press conference. Garcia logged two minutes in a 45-minute game, he’s been a good soldier who’s played through pain and it’s his Senior Day. Pope is simply worn down from all the minutes (he played 39 tonight) and the rigors of playing out of position against Big East centers for two months. It’s a lot to ask of a guy who’s never been through the Big East grind.

–Eugene Harvey did everything he could to lift the Pirates on Senior Day (nine assists, one turnover). Jordan Theodore also was superb (7-of-11 shooting). Jeff Robinson (25 points) is an outstanding finisher and keeps getting better and better. Jeremy Hazell showed his toughness by draining that four-point play in overtime with a defender draped all over him, and his final look was oh-so-close to going down. For the most part, Seton Hall played a very good game. Sometimes you play well and get beat. That’s sports.

—The Pirates did not get a good whistle (Marquette shot 25 free throws, Seton Hall shot 13), but Gonzalez doesn’t help the cause by riding the officials so hard. There’s a human element there that shouldn’t come into play—the officials are supposed to tune that stuff out—but we’re fooling ourselves if we think it doesn’t.

— Melvyn Oliver was not present once again due to academic issues.

— Sat next to Marquette’s primary beat writer. I asked him what makes the Golden Eagles so good in late-game situations. “No matter what, they stick to the plan,” he said. Credit to Buzz Williams for having his team play organized and disciplined basketball in the heat of the moment.

— The players were pretty dazed in the locker room, as you might expect. Garcia in particular was crushed. There were tears in his eyes, and I felt genuinely bad for him. They handled the inevitable NCAA questions by saying they weren’t thinking big picture, but their body language told a different story. I think these guys will get back up for Rutgers because it’s a rivalry game, but it won’t be easy.

— Caught up with former track teammate George Walsh at halftime. George was wearing an SHU Track “Beast of the East” T-shirt that was standard issue for the runners at the time. (I still have mine, but it would fit me like Spandex). Some interesting points were raised in our chat. The track alumni base is vast and proud. If they knew track was in trouble, perhaps a fundraising effort could have been mobilized, or at the very least some collective brainstorming could have taken place. Seton Hall, in its obsession for handling things quickly and quietly, cut their alumni out of the process.

Also, John Moon deserved to know the issue was going to be on the table at the board meeting. He put in enough time and brought enough prestige to SHU to have deserved that courtesy.

Once upon a time, in the 1980s and 90s, the brass at SHU and the archdiocese got it: Good athletic teams are an investment in pride and prestige at a university. Now they’re just a line on a budget. For decades track and field did the school proud. In return a bunch of tone-deaf paper-pushers did “field and track” dirty, tried lopping it off quick and painless like some dead skin. Shameless.

— I’ve added some player quotes below…

GONZO’S GREATEST HITS:

On Hazell’s pre-game injury: “All of a sudden Jeremy Hazell comes out in warmups and says he can’t move, he’s doubled up in pain, something happened to his back. That was a bad omen for us. It’s kind of miraculous the way he came back from that.”

“John Garcia is a wonderful guy, it’s Senior Day and I’m glad I started him. Unfortunately this might have been the worst team in the league to start him against because of the matchups. We really didn’t have anybody to put him on. Lazar Hayward took full advantage of that and made threes. I had to make a change right away. We got off to a rough start at home in a very important game, and then we played from behind pretty much the whole afternoon.”

“We lost to a very good team. The only thing that’s very unfortunate to me and I’m very upset about, I’m going to mention it and not discuss it, they took 12 more (free throw) attempts than us and they made 10 more than us. That is very discouraging.”

“I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get more out of Herb today. I don’t know what it was. He kind of had an uneventful game. I keep asking him if he’s fresh, he looked fresh in practice. We gave them a couple of days off after the Rutgers game. He seemed bouncy. I don’t know . . . I expected Herb to do more.”

No Stix Mitchell? “Not today. Today was a grind-it-out, touch matchup game, and we didn’t have a lot of margin for error. I’m not saying Robert Mitchell can’t help us. He helps us if he makes shots and there are matchups that are good for him. Today wasn’t a good matchup for him”

On their NCAA chances: “You might be dead, you might not be dead. It’s still hard to say. Everybody beating everybody. Everybody’s dead and one week later they’re alive . . . I don’t know if we’re in if we won today. Next game’s going to be hard. It’s revenge game. We’ve beaten them two times in a row in their building. It’s hard to go on the road and win in a rivalry game three years in a row. So we’ve got a lot going against us in that game.”

“Eugene was strong today. He had a lot of pressure on him and he played great. He had the courage to drive to the rim. There was a tough continuation call that I still don’t understand . . . I’ll see the film 17 times and I still won’t understand that one.”

On his behavior with the officials and whether it baits the refs: “I know there’s some fans that believe that. They think you can rub somebody the wrong way and it can hurt your team. My thing always has been there’s a human element to officiating and to coaching. Whether you’re supposed to talk or not, you have to fight if you feel things aren’t going well. You can go one of two ways. You can sit there and get your head kicked in or you can try to fight. My theory has always been to fight for our kids.”

JOHN GARCIA:

On Jeremy’s last shot, the missed 3-pointer: I’ve seen it before. Jeremy has done it a million times. I kind of was expecting him to make it. That’s how spoiled we are with Jeremy. I thought it was going in. It just fooled out. It wasn’t meant to be today.

We know this is a tough loss and this game definitely would have helped us a lot . . . Me personally, I was crushed. In the locker room, some tears were shed. Some of the guys were shedding tears. They felt they owed it to me. That’s going to hold a special place in my heart. But it was tough in the locker room. There were no words.

EUGENE HARVEY:

This was the toughest loss for us, but we’ve go to pick ourselves up . . . Guys have to get up, turn the page, we lost, it was a heartbreaker but we’ve got to get ready for the next one.

Jeremy took the tape off his hand and he has stitches and his hand was bleeding because it re-opened. That shows you the toughness of the guys on our team and how badly they want to win.

JEFF ROBINSON:

They made a lot of big shots and they had a lot of people come out and play hard. I give a lot of credit to Marquette. They fought and they did what they had to do.

What’s the problem in overtime: I really can’t say. It just hasn’t happened yet. It hasn’t been our time yet. But I think it will come . . . soon.

MARQUETTE COACH BUZZ WILLIAMS

On the play of Jeremy Hazell: “He has attempted two hundred more shots then the second guy on they’re team which is Herb Pope, and Pope gets a lot of his off of offensive rebounds. He shoots a lot of shots and he’s a high volume shooter. He scores half of his points before the catch because he’s so hard to guard coming off those screens.”

On your team’s awareness on Hazell’s injury: “My guys came in and told me that Hazell didn’t warm up, and I said to them that if you were as good as he was, you wouldn’t have to warm up either. So don’t worry about he’s going to play.”